EXCLUSIVE: Michael Schumacher And Top Gear Chat With Motoring Legend Perry McCarthy - The Original Stig
I'm 28 years old and an absolute gearhead. I live and breathe cars and motorsport, and for many others like me, there are two reasons for this: Top Gear and Michael Schumacher.
Sadly, these two subjects are all but coming to an end. Top Gear has been cancelled after an incident involving Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff, and Michael's tragic skiing incident has pulled him out of the world of motorsport.
The 7-time world champion's condition is unknown, with his family rightly enjoying the privacy they deserve. But with the tenth anniversary of this sad day soon approaching, it was a pleasure to talk about Michael and Top Gear with someone who has connections to both, thanks to OLBG.
Perry McCarthy, the self-proclaimed "Britain's unluckiest racing driver", was the original Stig of Jeremy Clarkson's rebooted Top Gear. Dressed in an all-black racing suit, his input into this character helped shape some of the show's most iconic moments.
Perry also had a stint in Formula 1, albeit a difficult one, despite being spectacularly talented behind the wheel of a car (if you need more information, simply Google the Andrea Moda racing team for a laugh). It's safe to say that things would have been very different if he'd breached F1 with a different team.
It was a pleasure talking with Perry about his history and connections to the world of motoring. Hopefully, we'll have him back for longer next time so we can really talk about his incredible experiences behind the wheels of some of the greatest cars ever built. I hope you enjoy the interview.
- Top Gear's original Stig
Alex Harrington: I wanted to start with Top Gear. Obviously the show is coming to an end. I was hoping you could tell me about a special or funny moment from your time on the show.
Perry McCarthy: There were a couple of funny moments, actually. One of them was involving 'A Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' when we had Jamie Oliver on and Jamie, we did the stuff in the Suzuki Liana where I showed him how to drive and he gets the hang of the track and then goes out and sets his own lap time.
But afterward, we did a bit of filming in a Volkswagen Campervan that Jamie had brought down. But it was a special one, because this Volkswagen Campervan had a Porsche engine fitted in it, and we did a bit of filming where I took him around the track as fast as possible while he made a salad in the back.
And believe me, by the time we got back, that was one tossed salad, I tell you! He was upside down, food everywhere, and we slid the door open at the end and it was just all in hysterics. It was pretty funny.
The other one was actually with a higher powered car called the Pagani Zonda. Yeah. And it was great. I mean, the thing is incredibly fast. But the biggest problem I had with it was that we were on a wet track. That's not the problem, but the clip underneath the steering wheel that you undo to bring the steering wheel towards you or lower it or make it go higher, et cetera. Well, that had broken.
So I'm now going around in this thing, flat out, and not just steering it, but with the steering wheel going in and out and up and down. It's like playing an accordion at 160 miles an hour.
AH: It's a sad time because Top Gear's coming to an end, so is the Grand Tour. I'm wondering, from your point of view do you think this is because people are just losing their interest in cars, or do you think there is just a gap in the market opening up?
PM: The god's honest truth, Alex, is I actually don't know. What I do know is that perhaps Top Gear, which is the one I've always concentrated on, obviously, perhaps it was in need of a new format.
It was need in need of a bit of a change. But I'm not creative enough to come up with that change. But I think that It may have become wearing. Maybe a rest might be the right idea, although commercially I'm very much against it because it was still an absolute cash cow for the BBC, and I'm not happy about the way that it's been cancelled, and the lack of real information coming out of it from the BBC. They're just treating everybody like Muppets in my opinion.
But one of the big things about Top Gear of course as a car show, was they had a huge budget behind it. So there was a very, very big commitment behind making a big TV show. And that really was evident from how many people they had on there, its own test track, the away days, all the adventures, the stunts. And so that really helped it.
And it was a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. They actually got it right, because that's one of the reasons why the quality of the show was then adopted in 215 different countries around the world.
And the stuff that we had with the Stig. I was always pretty pleased about bringing that together, and we had real fun. That was amazing. None of us had any idea, really, how big the show was going to be, or indeed how big the interest in the Stig was going to be. And keeping it secret was absolutely right.
After a little while, the question of who is the Stig was one of the top ten questions asked on the internet. I was right behind, "is there a God", and "am I pregnant"?
AH: Being the Stig, being this anonymous character, what kind of effect did it have on your career? Obviously the big thing about the Stig was the fact he was anonymous, but from your point of view, would you have liked to have your face shown at some point, give you a little bit of a personal boost?
PM: I think there are actually two different situations. Because the, the idea of anonymity of the Stig is what made the character work.
So, as long as you've got somebody that can peddle pretty well, go out there, keep it quiet. And that was that. From my own career, because, you know I do an awful lot of personal appearances and speeches and all this kind of stuff, which I won't do an advert for now.
But of course, TV exposure is always terribly helpful, but that wasn't the job then.
So it was really to make the Stig and make the show work as my contribution to the team. But I knew what we were after as soon as we discussed it. And that's why I went out and chose the Simpson Darth Vader crash helmet, because I was thinking from day one, I wanted to make this thing slightly otherworldly.
And the other thing, I was explaining to somebody the other day, is that there's a push me pull you as a race driver in normal situations because we speak to obviously our beloved fans and spectators, et cetera, and other people, and the team, and people around, but sometimes you don't want to.
Sometimes you just full on focus, especially before qualifying. And all I want to do sometimes is just be in Perry world before I get into the car. But sometimes you've got to communicate with people.
I thought, 'well actually, the Stig doesn't have to worry about this'. He's this thing that, not just doesn't want to communicate, doesn't know how to, doesn't even understand what people are, what food is, what lifestyle is, nothing.
You just got this thing that only understands sitting behind a steering wheel. So what I was doing straight away was as soon as people started talking to this thing. He just folded his arms and walked off because it had zero interest in that, so that was the kind of... second side of a race driver that the Stig was allowed to be.
AH: I want to move on to Michael Schumacher. It's coming up to the tenth year since his incident. First of all, could you talk me through your relationship with Michael?
PM: We've met a good few times. We weren't in each other's company often enough for me to say I was a friend, but I liked Michael. Every time I saw him, I liked to think he liked me. I may be wrong on that, but we often had a chat about a few things.
As a person who's quite outstanding on so many different areas, clearly, he went out to win.
I think it was the '91 Grand Prix. And of course, he's got the joint record, Lewis managed to equal recently his record of seven world championships. Actually, don't get me started on that, because Lewis probably should have been the eighth world champion, but that's a different situation.
When Michael set all these records, I don't think anybody ever thought that seven would be equalled, let alone possibly eclipsed. But that was Michael, and what he brought to his approach to Formula One was really an evolution of what we'd seen from even the best people before that.
And Michael's work ethic was incredible. With all his success, with all his wealth, with all his achievements, even towards the end of his career, he would probably still be one of the last people leaving a race garage at the end of the night, speaking to the engineers constantly saying, "how can we be better?"
And his level of fitness, of course, but I think Michael will principally be remembered for... He was able to be completely and absolutely flat out, probably pretty much every single lap. It was just relentless. He will be remembered for a few less savoury things. You know, he kind of would develop a twitch sometimes when somebody came alongside him.
AH: There's been a massive boom in F1. Netflix, American marketing styles have brought in so many new people. And people know the name of Schumacher, and they know what a legend he was. But from your point of view, what should new fans know about Michael?
PM: That's very difficult because sometimes it's the here and now that interests people and sometimes people aren't interested in the history of any particular sport, or the legacy. But if people are interested in it, maybe they would like to go further than the stats with Michael, and just really understand that this is somebody that I really just outlined there.
How Michael went about his commitment, and that's the word: complete and absolute commitment to motor racing and Formula One. I mean, this guy, even after all these wins, all these championships... Of a spare weekend, he'd often go karting. Now, that is truly astounding, isn't it? But that's what we saw from Michael.
But what a lot of people didn't see - and this is where I rather hope that his legacy carries on in equal measure - was that he was actually a real charitable soul. He really was. And that's something I really liked about Michael. And I could actually see that just from the amount of times we met.
There was a very warm side to the guy and I do feel that after he finished his racing career, I feel that maybe he would have gone on to do something of significant importance, but not in Formula One, because he was an ambassador for UNESCO, and I think that Michael had the intelligence, and the approach, and the platform to do something of a wider good.
That's where I guess, as I say, we weren't best mates whatsoever. weren't even close friends, but I like the guy and I kind of have an idea that's where we would have seen Michael Schumacher doing something very, very good on a very big scale.